Enemy armoured and motorised forces east of the Danube pushed forward and reached Deggendorf. … From his bridgehead at Dillingen the enemy was able to gain more ground to the East and South …

Because of the development of the ground and air situation, the creation of a full picture of the air situation in the Southern Area is becoming ever more difficult. Means of communication (telephone lines, radar stations) dropping out through enemy action, fuel and electricity shortages. The Army and Waffen-SS are continually commandeering the Luftwaffe’s fuel tank wagons and lorries …

As a result of air attacks on Reichenhall, Salzburg, Rosenheim and Hallein signals links from OKL’s command post to the outside were considerably disrupted.

(Luftwaffe General Staff situation report)

Fuel stocks in Luftgau VII, which covered Bavaria, stood at 392 tonnes of B4 and C3 for conventional aircraft and 2,388 of J2 for jets, sufficient for five and 34 days of operations respectively, based on average consumption over the previous fortnight. As of 1600 GMT the following day the Luftwaffe fuel dump in Krailling, a little west of Munich, reportedly held another 623 tonnes of B4, 710 of C3 and 2,483 of J2.

In the early hours, Lfl. 6 received a warning from Lw.Kdo. Nordost that messages about attacking bridges on the Danube would be handled by the Operations Officer but could not be forwarded to Gefechtsverband Helbig because communications links were down but an answer would follow as soon as possible. This was now the best that the faltering Luftwaffe could manage as the Americans were about to break out into Bavaria south of the river. The day’s orders to Gefechtsverband Neubiberg (those aircraft of IV./JG 53 and II./JG 300 equipped as fighter-bombers) entailed the earliest possible attack on the permanent Dillingen bridge with ‘special bombs’, observation of whose effects was of particular importance. After the mission, IV./JG 53 was to land back at Keinkarolinenfeld where it would remain with the Geschwader’s III. Gruppe, while II./JG 300 would go to Holzkirchen. Pontoon bridges between Höchstädt and Dillingen were to be attacked by aircraft of III. and IV./JG 53, JG 300, EJG 1 and JG 27 before strafing enemy concentrations and movements in the area Höchstädt, Dillingen, Lauingen, Holzheim and Kicklingen. The aim was to have all these operations coincide. It was to be IV./JG 53’s swan song as 7. Jagd.Div. ordered that when it reached Kleinkarolinenfeld it was to hand over its aircraft to JV 44 and disband. There is however no record of JV 44 either needing or receiving any Bf 109s.

Five Fw 190s of JG 300 attacked the Dillingen bridge with Wasserballons, two of them at at 0441. American AA left them no chance to assess the results but according a summary of the day a reconnaissance photo obtained at 1000 confirmed that the bridge was undamaged. Conversely the more detailed Einsatztagesmeldung (daily operations report) reported ‘bridge hit’, which was then overtyped with »zerstört LB« (destroyed, aerial photograph). Neither document carries a time of issue and so it is impossible to say which represents the last word on the subject. Another 12 of JG 300’s Focke-Wulfs bombed and strafed south of Dillingen for 20 minutes from 0455, emerging from intense AA fire with one pilot and his plane missing. In return they claimed the destruction of two trucks plus damage to several more and to four tanks. Citing Oblt. Fritz Wegener, Lorant and Goyat add that the mission got off to a late start because a number of Fw 190s got bogged down on muddy, rutted taxiways and that several of the aircraft that did get off the ground turned back. Wegener was hit by AA while making a firing pass on the bridgehead and bailed out into trees. He was found by American troops and taken to a military hospital in Dillingen with injuries to his head and pelvis. 

Seventeen Messerschmitts from EJG 1 were up from 0415 in three waves but were unable to get to their targets after tangling with a formation of ‘Spitfires and Mustangs’, emerging with a pilot and his Bf 109 missing. Three formations from JG 53 (totalling 39 Bf 109s) did get through and claimed to have destroyed a truck and several armoured cars carrying infantry, as well as shooting down an Auster. Three of their pilots were posted missing and two Bf 109s were lost, three more were missing and another three damaged. Nineteen Messerschmitts of JG 27 did somewhat better with total claims from their two missions of 15 trucks left burning and two Austers shot down at a cost of an aircraft destroyed and two missing along with one pilot killed and two missing. The 19 Bf 109s of JG 27 deployed over the Dillingen–Donauwörth area claimed two Austers shot down and three trucks and a tank set on fire, in addition a belly-landed B-17 and an ammunition dump were attacked with ‘well-placed hits’. Concentrating on the bridgehead, JG 300’s 17 Fw 190s claimed two trucks and four tanks destroyed and others attacked with observing detailed results, noting also ‘Dillingen bridge not hit’. Eight of III./EJG 1’s Bf 109s were engaged by Allied aircraft and did not reach Dillingen while the nine that did get through strafed in the face of heavy anti-aircraft fire.

Losses from these operations amounted to:

Allied sources picked up a report of a 2./NAG 13 reconnaissance of the Dillingen–Lauingen area around noon. American AA gunners claimed five Bf 109s ‘Cat II’ (damaged) as well as an Fw 190 destroyed and an Me 262. No Me 262 is known to have been operating over the bridgehead but 1.(F)/100’s Ofw. Nitschke undertook a visual reconnaissance of the condition of the Danube bridges between Ulm and Ingolstadt, landing safely at München-Riem.

Overnight NSG 1, NSG 2, NJG 2 and NJG 6 were active against American forces in Bavaria and further afield but the only sorties to include Dillingen were the five by Bf 109s of NJG 11 one of whose number went missing along with its pilot. Totenkopf signalled that it expected to operate with 12 Fi 156s from first light on the 25th, two of which were assigned to Dillingen. Their tasks were the same as on the previous night.

During the day, Kommodore Maj. Siegfried Barth had announced the disbandment of KG 51, sparking off disputes and recriminations within the high command until the decision was eventually overturned. One consequence of this was that Me 262s took no further part in operations over Dillingen after the two sorties of 23 April (see above).

Conflicting accounts

Lorant and Goyat’s account in Battaille dans le Ciel d’Allemagne differs from the surviving German records in various respects. They write that II./JG 300’s pilots were briefed to approach the target in line astern at low altitude, with a ground speed of 250 km/h and were to drop their bombs some 200 m from the bridge before breaking away at full power and returning to Holzkirchen without waiting to join up with their escorting Bf 109s. They say however that the latter came from III./JG 300 rather than III./JG 53, and draw on the recollections of Uffz. Klaus Lambio (9./JG 300) who flew ‘yellow 13’ on the mission. They write that the Fw 190s of the II. Gruppe went in at very low altitude, their Bf 109 escorts at 600–800 m, and encountered no Allied aircraft en route. The escorts drew most of the AA fire which felled at least one Messerschmitt in the target area while another, with damage to its cooling system, regained German lines. As recounted by Lambio:

… the Jabo 190s regained altitude … in a tight turn to starboard. We … and were soon above them. At that moment, tall gouts of water rose from the Danube and after a slight delay we felt the shock waves from the explosions … The Flak, which was bracketing us with remarkable accuracy, caused us to quicken our pace. We landed a few minutes later at München-Neubiberg.

The spectacle led the Germans to believe their attack had succeeded but they were to be disappointed. Some of the escorts had seen a dark line in the water against which bombs had exploded and although they thought this to be a pontoon bridge, none was present and it seems instead to have been a net barrier. The authors go on to describe how a second mission was flown around midday by 10 Fw 190s, with 14 Bf 109s of III./JG 300 as top cover. They ran into American fighters in the target area and were forced to jettison their bombs, three Focke-Wulfs being lost. Ritterkreuztråger Oblt. Waldemar Radener bailed out near Krumbach (around 38 km south of Dillingen) making it back to Holzkirchen two days later, while another Fw 190 force-landed at Neubiberg with damage from AA fire. Two P-47s were claimed in return while Bf 109s of IV./JG 300 on a sweep of the Dilingen–Augsburg area accounted for another Thunderbolt. A third attack was said to have been ordered for twilight until it was discovered there were not enough special fuses for 10 Wasserballons and so the operation was scrubbed.

At 80 years’ remove, it is not possible to know whether the Jagd Div. 7 reports or the veterans’ are the more accurate. It is quite possible that the former are incomplete and near certain that the latter are. While pilots attacking the bridge would probably have been briefed whether other friendly aircraft were likely to be encountered, on security grounds they may not have been given all the details. Equally there are obvious errors in the Jagd Division’s reporting, notably repeated references of Bf 109s of ‘NJG 1’ which appear to mean EJG 1 (by day) or NJG 11 (by night). While eyewitnesses are often mistaken about dates or conflate the events of different days, they are unlikely to have been completely wrong about taking part in an attack on an especially difficult target with novel weapons. Nevertheless, the contemporary reports omit any mention of operations by III./JG 300’s Bf 109s.

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